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Niccolò Machiavelli's Use of Cesare Borgia in the Prince

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Niccolò Machiavelli's Use of Cesare Borgia in the Prince Narrativizing the Self: Niccolò Machiavelli’s use of Cesare Borgia in The Prince Alex Mizumoto-Gitter University of Kansas Introduction When Niccolò Machiavelli wrote The Prince in 1513 it was as a professional diplomat who had not only been fired, but also imprisoned and tortured after a political reversal brought a sudden downturn to his fortunes. While he had never managed to achieve high rank, he had made a career out of representing his beloved Florence beyond its borders and sending back information to his supe- riors from as far away as Spain. Machiavelli had even briefly served Florence as a military commander, although he is best remembered today as a political theorist and author.1 The Prince was influenced by his work experience and was intended to bolster his chances at finding employment under a new patron. Within its pages, Machiavelli set himself up as an authoritative figure, capable of offering military and governmental advice to a ruler through his analysis of other historical commanders, most famously Cesare Borgia. Machiavelli had been working as a Florentine diplomat during Borgia’s Italian military campaigns and had spoken with him several times, both then as well as later during Borgia’s imprisonment in Rome.2 Thus, it is not surprising that Niccolò Machiavelli recounted Cesare Borgia’s successful campaigns in the Italian Romagna starting in 1499 or his fall from power after his father’s death in 1503. These were prominent political events that he had observed firsthand and as part of his professional career. Historians have long considered Machiavelli’s description of Borgia in The Prince valuable because of his professional insight and because he penned it only a few years after Borgia’s death in 1507.3 © 2018 Alex Mizumoto-Gitter. All rights reserved. 33 34 UCLA HISTORICAL JOURNAL Vol. 29 No. 1 Machiavelli’s narrative description of Borgia is less straightforwardly his- torical than it has often been treated, however, even within texts that analyze Machiavelli’s outside influences and choices as the author.4 As this article will argue, when his examples and vignettes are pieced together into chronological order (from chapters three, eleven, thirteen, seven, seventeen, and seven once again), it becomes apparent that Machiavelli has deliberately framed his discus- sion of Borgia within the narrative of a Greek tragedy, one hidden within the larger text. This creative and literary turn is not inconsistent with Machiavelli’s other work [The Mandrake], and recent scholarship has declared that “One need no longer apologize for thinking of [him] as preeminently a writer.”5 Machiavelli was not acting solely as a “coolly analytical theorist” when writing The Prince, but rather was “a man of fertile imagination” who took creative liberties with even his more serious works.6 The main point of The Prince was not to dem- onstrate Machiavelli’s ability to craft a piece of historical fiction. He instead chose to use examples from Cesare’s life where thematically relevant. Even so, as an imaginative and often playful writer, he addressed them with an eye to the literary narrative they told as a whole. Machiavelli’s The Prince has greatly influenced historians’ characterization of Borgia over the centuries, as his rendering of him within a tragic narrative structure has been replicated by modern writers who use his work as a near- primary source. It is a compelling narrative arc and biographers, such as Sarah Bradford, have used it to frame Borgia’s life. Bradford is typical in acknowl- edging Machiavelli’s analysis of Borgia in The Prince.7 In the final chapter of her 1976 text, she pointed to Machiavelli and summarized her own work, writing that “Cesare fought back with all his resources against these blows of fate, confident that he could once again master Fortune, but in the end it was his own char- acter which was principally responsible for his downfall in 1503.”8 While she disagreed with Machiavelli over the precise circumstances that led to Borgia’s loss of power, she, like other scholars, made use of his narrative and structure.9 In turning to Machiavelli the diplomat or political theorist for a description of Borgia and his military campaigns, scholars in more recent centuries have also drawn upon Machiavelli as a creative author and incorporated his literary frame- work into their analysis. Machiavelli’s description of Borgia in The Prince is much more expansive than the other examples he gave his readers. He named several other histor- ical military leaders of far greater stature than Borgia, such as Alexander the Great and Scipio Africanus, but did not engage with them in the same man- ner.10 Furthermore, a close reading of the text shows that Machiavelli identified himself with Borgia and with his situation and framed him to be his literary and historical double.11 As this paper will explore, this self-identification with the fic- tional Borgia in The Prince becomes more apparent in light of how Machiavelli discussed his own contemporary fall from grace. Machiavelli implicitly com- pared Borgia’s handling of fortune’s whims with his own behavior in the face 2018 NarrativIzING THE SElF 35 of difficulty. In this, Machiavelli argued that he behaved not just appropriately, but actually in a superior fashion to someone whom he had admired when at the height of his power and whom he still held up as worthy of emulation. In The Prince, Machiavelli used Borgia as a mirror to his own frustrations. Historiography For centuries Cesare Borgia has been written into different roles.12 While his- torical and literary scholars no longer seriously argue over whether or not The Prince should be condemned as immoral, how Machiavelli intended it to be read continues to attract debate. Some scholars stress The Prince as fundamentally a historically grounded and pragmatic text, regardless of what rhetorical flourishes Machiavelli might use when describing Borgia.13 In this interpretation, it matters little how Machiavelli chose to fictionalize Borgia. His authorial decisions were made with an eye to explaining the political situation as it was unfolding, not to crafting a deeper narrative, or even comparably important secondary one. If Borgia stands for anything, it is as shorthand for Machiavelli’s practical political arguments. Others call Machiavelli’s account of Borgia an idealization.14 In this interpretation, Borgia is presented as larger than life through his actions in the Romagna. Some write that Machiavelli discussed Borgia primarily as a negative example, not as someone to emulate.15 In both of these explanations Machiavelli was not just writing a history in which Borgia featured. Rather, he used Borgia himself as a tool to elaborate upon certain points, whether or not they were imme- diately relevant to the politics of early sixteenth-century Italy. Which points, and to what end, are the subjects under debate. Within the historiography on Borgia more broadly, Machiavelli’s The Prince is often taken as fundamentally an account of Machiavelli’s real interactions with Borgia and is analyzed as a wholly factual account, not as something closer to historical fiction. This is similar to how Johann Burchard’s account of Alexander vI’s court, translated as At the Court of the Borgia, is repeatedly cited as the papal master of ceremony’s private diary in which he detailed his observations of Alexander vI’s court.16 Burchard, who died in 1506, wrote about debauchery, incest, and satanic rites, and while his writings provide valuable insight into the comings and goings at court, he was also publishing during the reign of Julius II, Alexander vI’s political rival. Parts of Burchard’s account even directly referenced Malleus Maleficarum, The Hammer of Witches, with whose authors he was on friendly terms.17 Although Burchard was present when many of the events in mention took place, he was also seeking to advance his career by writing about them in a certain light. Machiavelli was influenced as well by his damaged personal status and honor and, therefore, his manipulation of Borgia was not solely to show mastery of the peninsula’s political and military history. Borgia was an idealization of a kind and he did ultimately come to failure, but his history in The Prince is also a fictionalization of his downfall as it relates to Machiavelli’s own life.18 36 UCLA HISTORICAL JOURNAL Vol. 29 No. 1 Part One: The Intentional Fictionalization of Cesare Borgia Machiavelli intentionally fictionalized his account of Borgia in The Prince by taking real events from Borgia’s life and framing them in the style of a Greek tragedy, a literary form of enduring cultural prestige.19 He was familiar with the formal structure of tragedies and made deliberate choices in his writing to craft that narrative, which he then obscured and subsumed within the larger text.20 Although he chose this particular narrative structure, it was certainly not the only one available to him. Other authors, even other contemporaneous ones, framed Borgia’s life differently.21 Machiavelli was aware of his role as author and there- fore of the decisions he made in The Prince, as he made clear when he discussed writing it.22 His choice of narrative was deliberate and intentional and the text is, in fact, one of the earliest works of historical fiction printed and published about Borgia, and certainly the first one to achieve such influential distribution. The story of Borgia’s rise and fall is broken up in The Prince between five chapters. In brief, the narrative can be read chronologically by looking at sections of chapters three, eleven, thirteen, seven, seventeen, and seven once again. Borgia is introduced in chapter three as already occupying the lands of the Romagna as a strong young man in the prime of life.23 His father, Pope Alexander vI, is wealthy and militant and at the height of power, and his new patron is the King of France, as described in chapters eleven and thirteen.24 Alexander vI himself is depicted as an economic and political backer and does not appear in a particu- larly personal role.
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